Potato growers more confident about avoiding restrictions

Farmers in the Thorpdale area are growing in confidence that their trade will not be restricted by an outbreak of potato cyst nematode.

A 20 kilometre radius quarantine has been placed on a farm at Thorpdale where the plant pest was discovered earlier this month.

Grower representative Mike Durkin has been to Queensland and Sydney this week talking to potato growers who rely on seed potatoes from Gippsland.

He says Thorpdale produces half of the Australian potato industry's seed potatoes.

"So all these other potato producing areas rely on the Gippsland area, particularly Thorpdale ... so that they can source their potatoes ... so it's in their the other growing area's interests too that this issue is resolved," he said.

The federal Member for McMillan, Russell Broadbent, is reassuring the potato industry in west Gippsland it will be well supported.

Mr McMillan says the family who owns the farm where the pest was detected, are devastated.

Victorian Agriculture Minister Joe Helper is meeting producers today, and Mr Broadbent says the Federal Government will also step in.

"We want to make sure, at a federal level, anything the Federal Government can do, and Tony Burke can do, to say, this is what we're dealing with for a long time in many areas, those potatoes have gone into interstate markets before, and we want to make sure as soon as possible that these potatoes are able to go into interstate markets," he said.